All submissions must be in PDF format. Submissions are limited to eight content pages, including all figures and tables, in the NIPS “submission” style; additional pages containing only references are allowed. Reviewing will be double blind; all submissions must be anonymized. Camera-ready papers will be due in advance of the conference; however, authors will be allowed to make minor changes, such as fixing typos or adding references, for a short period of time after the conference.

Author guidelines can be found here.

Frequently asked questions can be found here.

Supplementary material: Authors may submit up to 100MB of supplementary material, such as proofs, derivations, data, or source code; all supplementary material must be in PDF or ZIP format. Looking at supplementary material is at the discretion of the reviewers.

Reviewing: The reviewing process will be double blind at the level of reviewers and area chairs (i.e., reviewers and area chairs cannot see author identities) but not at the level of senior area chairs and program chairs. Authors will have a one-week opportunity to view and respond to initial reviews during the reviewing process. After decisions have been made, reviews, meta-reviews, and author responses for accepted submissions will be made public (but reviewer, area chair, and senior area chair identities will remain anonymous). Authors of rejected submissions will also have the option of making their submissions, reviews, meta-reviews, and author responses public if they wish (again, reviewer, area chair, and senior area chair identities will remain anonymous).

Evaluation criteria: Submissions that violate the NIPS style or page limits, are not within the scope of NIPS (see subject areas above), are in submission elsewhere, or have already been published elsewhere may be rejected without further review. Submissions that have fatal flaws revealed by the reviewers—including (without limitation) incorrect proofs or flawed or insufficient wet-lab, hardware, or software experiments—may be rejected on that basis, without taking into consideration other criteria. Other submissions will be judged on the basis of their technical quality, novelty, potential impact, and clarity. Typical NIPS papers often (but not always) include a mix of algorithmic, theoretical, and experimental results, in varying proportions. While theoretically grounded arguments are certainly welcome, it is counterproductive to add “decorative math” whose primary purpose is to make the submission look more substantial or even intimidating, without adding significant insight. Algorithmic contributions should have at least an illustration of how the algorithm might eventually materialize into a machine learning application.

Preprints: Non-anonymous preprints (on arXiv, social media, websites, etc.) are permitted, though preprints in the NIPS style must use the new “preprint” option, rather than the “final” option. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest. Authors may submit work to NIPS that is already available as a preprint (e.g., on arXiv) without citing it; however, previously published papers by the authors on related topics must be cited (with adequate anonymization to preserve double-blind reviewing).

Dual submissions: Dual submissions will be identified via a combination of automated methods and human (reviewer, area chair, senior area chair, program chair) judgment. NIPS coordinates with other conferences to identify dual submissions. Submissions that are identical or substantially similar to papers that are in submission to, have been accepted to, or have been published in other archival conferences, journals, workshops, etc. will be deemed dual submissions. Submissions that are identical or substantially similar to other NIPS submissions will also be deemed dual submissions; submissions should be distinct and sufficiently substantial. Note that slicing contributions too thinly may result in submissions being deemed dual submissions. The program chairs reserve the right to reject all NIPS submissions by all authors of dual submissions, not just those deemed dual submissions. The NIPS policy on dual submissions applies for the entire duration of the reviewing process (i.e., from the submission deadline to the notification date). Authors should contact the program chairs if they need further clarification.

Competitions, Demonstrations, Tutorials, Workshops, and Symposia: There are separate competition and demonstration tracks at NIPS. Authors who wish to submit to these tracks should consult the appropriate calls. There are also separate calls for tutorials, workshops, and symposia.